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Android Phone Demand Up 250%, iPhone Down
CWmike writes "A 'monstrous' jump in demand for Android-equipped smartphones has turned the market upside down, according to a retail pollster. Of the people who told ChangeWave Research in a mid-December survey that they planned to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, 21% said they expected to purchase an Android phone. That number represented a 250% increase over the 6% that pegged Android as their mobile OS of choice when ChangeWave last queried consumers' plans in September. 'That change rivals anything that we've seen in the last three years of the smartphone market,' said Paul Carton, ChangeWave's director of research, adding that the sudden surge in consumer interest in Android had 'roiled' the market. 'This is an indication that Android has finally caught consumer interest,' added Carton, who cited the recent advertising campaign for the Motorola Droid smartphone as the reason why interest in Android has skyrocketed. Android's leap translated into good news for Motorola and HTC, the most prominent makers of Google-powered handsets, with the former reaping most of the benefit. Motorola's share of smartphone purchases in the next 90 days shot up from 1% in September to 13% in December. Carton tagged the company's Droid as the reason. '[It's] the first increase for Motorola we've seen in three years,' Carton said." Here is the ChangeWave report.
Yes... share growth is a useless metric for a new offering. Whats 350% of nothing? Still nothing. How about giving us the market share instead.
The survey could mean lots of things without this bit of confirmation data. Sales are going in the same direction as the survey.
Home of The Suki Series
Notice that this wasn't a report of 250% sales growth... it was a report of 250% increase in a poll asking "What cell phone do you PLAN to buy?"... not quite the same thing.
Googles market model is better. Multiple phone designs on any carrier that will have them. It's really that simple. The design of the OS is better than iPhones competitors. Though, I do think the application openness is going to bite them in butt over the long term. Allowing background applications from any provider looks good on paper, but in practice is going to create a bot network.
If Apple went with all carriers who wanted them and released a handful of branded designs, it's sales would soar.
Burn Hollywood Burn
"Desire for half-decent non-AT&T smartphone is less saturated than desire for AT&T iPhone by those who haven't already got one."
I think this finding is more related to that fact that the only half-decent smartphone is currently limited to iPhone on AT&T. (Sorry Blackberry/Palm/HTC---no lightsaber app means that you're less than half decent B-)
Imagine that! Competition works! If regulators would only get that through their heads...with enough time, consumers will win in the end as a result of competition.
Maybe Apple will finally get it through their heads and open up the iPhone for real development; doubt it though...
I have a Macbook, Mac Mini and an iPod Touch, and I opted for a Droid. I think the #1 reason I went with the Droid was because it wasn't AT&T. But a close second was the fact that music was drag and drop and that it could run background apps. Overall, I am really please with the purchase. Ordered the multimedia dock today, so I can use it as an alarm clock.
I personally own an iPhone, and I like it.. despite the drawbacks. But I'm considering an Android phone next for some of the above reasons myself. I will weigh the pros and cons carefully and decide at the time -- if Polled, right now I might say that I'd get an Android phone next, if just because the idea is more appealing to me. This could be partly why interest in the iPhone is *potentially* waning... people see there are alternatives out there.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
My Verizon contract was up, and my family needed new phones. We ended up with 4 Android phones, 3 HTC Eris's, and a Droid. Verizon sold a LOAD of them over the holiday season, mostly due to rebates and discounts. The 4 phones, normally over $600 even with a contract, ended up costing me $200.
The first reseller we went to (after they were very helpful during our selection process) had run out by the week before Christmas, and had to send us to a Verizon store. They had plenty, and they were going out the door fast.
I'll preface this by saying I haven't used a Droid, or other 2nd-gen Android Phone. I did use a G1 for a little while, and from my experience no amount of marketing would have put it up with the iPhone. The interface was clunky and inconsistent. In particular there were 2 separate email apps built-in, one for Gmail and one for everything else, and they behaved differently. Battery life was abysmal at best. While the G1 has some advantages over the iPhone, it was not a usable smart phone unless you were tethered to a power supply. It reminded me very much of the Sidekick (which was developed by many of the same people as Android, and I owned 3 different versions of the sidekick), which notoriously over-promised and under-delivered every step of the way.
The first few releases of Android followed similar patterns. When I bought my iPhone 3G it did (almost) everything they advertised, and there wasn't hype about the next version until 6 months later. My brand new iPhone was the best iPhone one could get. When I got my G1, I was disappointed that it didn't have all of the cool features I had already been reading about in Android press releases and articles. Android marketing seems more about the "next" version, which makes the actual product seem dated before its even for sale.
I hope the new versions of Android devices are better, but those experiences have left me skeptical. I'll give them a look when my iPhone contract is up (next summer), but I'm not falling for the hype this time. If the product for sale doesn't have the features I want, I won't get it. I can't buy it hoping that they'll eventually deliver. I've been burned by that too many times.
I've been really happy with my iPhone 3G. When I got it, I knew I was giving up important features that I had on Windows Mobile, like the ability to shoot crappy video and an open development platform, but the iPhone mostly worked as promised (with a notable exception of Push Notifications, which did not show up until a year or so later with the 3rd generation of the OS). With the limitations of the iPhone (one app at a time is the most troubling), I'm certainly going to shop around before my next purchase, rather than automatically buy next summer's iPhone, but it will take more than slick marketing for Android to win my business (but I am pulling for them!).
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Imagine that! Competition works!
I hear that's why the US has such fast internet and cheap, reliable telephony service, both with excellent customer service of course, especially compared to the EU and Japan.
</sarcasm>
Sorry if I'm pushing it here. It's just striking to hear about the abuse US ISP and telecomms customers (apparently) have to put up with, compared to what I experience in Denmark.
On the other hand, your government isn't doing much better than failing markets. For instance, take a listen to a recent EconTalk episode about market failures and government failures at http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/12/winston_on_mark.html
In summary: it's the lobbyists.
If I recall correctly, the guest, Winston, only looked at government failure in the US. Extrapolating from there to government failure in general might be a wee bit hasty.
The really provocative statement would be that right-wingers don't get that government intervention is the right solution in theory, what left-wingers don't get is that it rarely works in practice, and the elephant in the room nobody is doing anything about is that the lobbyists screw up The Right Thing, making it Not The Right Thing, and so nothing works (as well as it could).
Probably, because that's what "demand" implies?
Maybe, but while opinion surveys can be interesting, they aren't very good indicators of actual behavior. If I asked 4,000 people whether they planned to buy a second Bible in the next 90 days -- for their children -- I bet a lot of people would answer yes. How many of them would actually go out and do it?
Part of "demand" in the economics sense is not just wanting something, but willingness to pay for something. It doesn't matter what people say; if nobody is actually buying a product, there's no demand.
It's also extremely important to understand the sampling method in a study like this (which is probably why so many of them neglect to discuss their methods). Where did the people surveyed come from? How was the sample selected? At random? How random? From the phone book? From a Web site? Were the participants self-selecting (i.e. you're only surveying people who were demonstrably interested to begin with)? Obtaining a representative statistical sample may not be a "science," as such, but it's darn close.
There are also such things as leading questions. What if the question on this survey wasn't phrased the way it's stated in the report? What if they just asked, "Who is your preferred smartphone operating system vendor: Apple, RIM, Symbian, Microsoft, or Google?" Apple fans would immediately say Apple; everybody else would say Google. The typical consumer doesn't realize that when you're asking them if they want a smartphone with a RIM OS, what you're really asking them is whether they want a BlackBerry. (And judging from my own, purely anecdotal survey -- looking around me when I'm waiting in line for something -- a lot of people do want one.)
Some people also answer "yes" to surveys because they're secretly hoping they will get something for free. Sometimes it's not so secret; what if everybody who participated in this survey got a $20 off coupon for any smartphone they wanted from Verizon. Which phone would they be thinking about while they did the survey?
They say "lies, damn lies, and statistics" because it's easy to make numbers say pretty much anything you want -- especially if you aren't sticking to sound statistical principles. In my experience, fly-by-night marketing firms seldom do. It doesn't pay the bills.
Breakfast served all day!
The phone part of the iPhone is it's least appealing part. What makes the iPhone amazing is that it is a fully featured small computer with a ton of low-cost apps. I recently went to a trip to Budapest, Hungary. I downloaded apps which included an offline map of the city (so no data use), maps of the metro system, and an audio tourist guide. It was like having my own personal tourist guide. When back at the hotel I used Skype over wifi to call home cheap. Sure beat having a big clunky book + large foldout map that screamed "tourist please rob me". When the android has the apps the iPhone does, I will consider it.
For a brand new product vs an iconic powerhouse, that is little short of amazing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not as of a few days ago. Chrome passed Safari in browser market share, according to digitaltrends.com.
Remember, that's a beta Google product vs Apple's flagship browser.
Safari isn't even the browser of choice for Mac users, for chrissake.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because it makes you feel happy. So much of what a human is revolves around feeling, that if you ignore it, you are going to miss a lot.
A perfect example of how feeling trumps logic is your assertion that charging daily takes a lot of time and attention. In fact it only takes 30 seconds of attention in the evening to plug your phone in, it is not something that should logically seem like a problem, and yet somehow it has created this loathing inside of you. That doesn't make any sense at all, and yet it is real (note: this doesn't apply if you actually use your phone so much that you have to charge it three times a day, but that isn't a problem for typical users, the type you were referring to).
Qxe4
So, you're comparing a third-generation iPhone with a first generation Android phone?
From an engineering perspective, that's a fair criticism, but not from a marketing one. When I go into the respective stores, I have a choice between a third gen and a first gen product.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
So, you're comparing a third-generation iPhone with a first generation Android phone?
What was he supposed to do? Borrow somebody's Delorean?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the answers are obvious; I'm not sure what's unsatisfying about them. It works well. It's not complicated to set up. It's functional as an iPod, which lots of people already owned. The web browser renders pages normally, the way a desktop computer would. It's mail application connects to mail servers normally, the way a desktop application would. "Visual voicemail" works the way voicemail should work-- no more "if you would like to listen to this message, please press 1". Apple proved that a touchscreen can work on a phone if it's executed properly. If you own a Mac and use iTunes already, then the phone will integrate extraordinarily well with your system in a convenient way. The iPhone had 8GB of storage built in for audio and video when most phones came with something more like 32 megs of internal storage. Apple managed to get a large set of developers to produce applications for their phone. The interface is simple and elegant, pretty, and responsive.
Android's success doesn't surprise me either. In a lot of ways, I think it's a validation of Apple's approach, and it proves that Apple's success wasn't simply based on hype and trendiness. The Android phones that are now enjoying success actually resemble the iPhone much more than any of the pre-iPhone smartphones. Look at the iPhone and the Motorola Q, and ask yourself which smartphone the Droid has more in common with. Apple was successful because they made a well designed product. Now Motorola is enjoying success because they've made a well designed product.
The only downside is many of the manufactures now violate the GPLv2 copyright either by refusing to release the kernel sources or dragging their feet for months... For example HTC keeps violating the GPL with their phones... go ask HTC specifically for the Kernel (not the Android software) for their CDMA phones and they'll either point you to the GSM version of the kernel, claim that their kernel modifications fall under the Apache license, are proprietary or claim that Sprint and/or Verizon have to release it.
I often wondered what was so special about the iPhone. I have never got a satisfying answer.
If you're saying the iPhone isn't appealing to you, great. Fine. Whatever. Have some free mod points from people who agree with you.
If you're saying you don't understand people-- if you're saying you honestly try to put yourself in other folks' shoes, try to empathize with them, try to see why they love what they love, but you just can't-- well, congratulations, you're a geek. You've come to the right place.
Wow, so demand for a phone that has sold tens of millions of units in the 2.5 years it's been out is leveling off, and demand for a newer phone that has sold far fewer units is growing? Stop the presses!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
When the market for the iPhone is saturated, then of course it's market share will drop when some new do-dad comes out.
Except the market for the iPhone is not really saturated. It's the market for the iPhone on AT&T's network that's saturated. I bet nearly everyone reading this post knows at least one person who drools over the iPhone but would sooner take a hot poker in the eye than switch to AT&T to get it.
When Apple opens up the iPhone to other carriers in the US, iPhone adoption will skyrocket due to that pent-up demand. And they are definitely going to open it up to other carriers as soon as the latest exclusivity agreement expires-- because AT&T has dragged them down long enough, and because other carriers will give Apple what they want, now that they have seen the success it brought to AT&T despite their sub-par network.
~Philly
Windows Mobile is on history's exit ramp.
Couldn't this be all of us poor saps who aren't on AT&T (in the US, of course) finally getting a shot at picking up a nice smartphone that's not a Blackberry? Think about all the people who want iPhone like functionality, but don't want to switch to AT&T. There's plenty of them, and this is probably them finally having their day. No other smartphone, has come close to the iPhone in terms of hype-crazed-madness for the phone like the revised android platform. That's not to say there aren't other good smartphone platforms out there (Palm, RIM, whatever the hell else people use these days), I think these are just skewed numbers from non AT&T customers finally pouncing on a cool set of phones.
I would have answered YES to an android in December. Now, the answer would be NO. Not unless I can replace all the Google apps with something else.
What changed my mind? Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google..
This is the same guy who had Google blackball CNET after they published some of his personal info.
The guy's a hypocrite who simply can't be trusted any more. I don't need my phone spying on me for some guy who thinks his personal info is privileged, and yours and mine isn't.
You do know that 2.0 is in the AOSP (Android Open Source Program) so the code is freely available to anyone, there are community ROMs that run 2.0 on my HTC Dream albeit very badly. The problem is that other manufacturers are planning to deploy it on their new hardware lines not their old ones. Motorola just released earlier then Samsung or HTC (who just announced their 2010 line up).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Do you realize that the iPhone only has 4% of the market? Even so, I think the presence of the Android is great, because maybe it will cause Steve J. and his flock of ass-ki...er, fans, to stand back and realize that the iPhone, while quite cool conceptually, suffers from some very lame design issues. Now all Google needs is a phone-less device that can subscribe to a carrier's broadband-only plan.
Symbian, J2ME, Windows Mobile are "open" because they have a very paranoid security model which some hate. iPhone has nothing of that sort, there is no "Apple signed" scheme and Apple loves the "app store" like stuff including the policies. See the hell they gave to basic OS X input manager developers just because some idiot trolls released proof of concepts.
Apple has set up a monster themselves and there is no way to change it unless they implement "symbian signed" scheme. Things would be a lot easier if they didn't start a lawsuit fight with Nokia along with offensive arguments which are unheard in mobile scene until now.
Symbian signed makes more sense than J2ME sandbox because both deal with native apps which have real deep access to OS/hardware. I can't really picture Apple allowing 2-3 resident apps I use on Symbian right now, e.g. iON Battery timer... Something replicates battery level functionality with estimated time remaining. Imagine the horror if you submitted something like that to app store :) Or the idea of a IM application always on and shamelessly added to startup. Or the themes...
If you open the platform, people will ask for such things from developers and developers will sure ship them.
My iPhone 3G lasts about 4 days if used smartly and sparingly. That is, Edge for voice, data through Wifi, only a few short calls per day, no bluetooth, no music/video/games. Pretty much the same functionality you got from your Palm Treo :)
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
Symbian, J2ME, Windows Mobile are "open" because they have a very paranoid security model which some hate.
And so, too, does the iPhone.
iPhone has nothing of that sort, there is no "Apple signed" scheme
Just how do you think app store apps run anyway? All apps coming from the app store are signed by the developer, using an Apple generated certificate. Just try running an unsigned app on a non-jailbroken phone. Springboard (the app launcher) will not run it.
All apps run in a sandbox (unless you jailbreak) and cannot get to the system. There's that "paranoid security model" you claim they do not have.
I can't really picture Apple allowing 2-3 resident apps
Well sure, because it eats into battery life. It's pretty ironic to take down the lifespan of your device by an hour just to have a battery measurement app wake up the processor every few seconds... I can understand why people want background apps but actually notifications are a decent compromise for users so they can have a somewhat predictable battery experience. For instance, there are already a number of IM apps that use notifications for this and are thus essentially "running all the time" as far as the user is concerned.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hell even for iPhone it's the same. Plenty of apps require a specific version of the iPhone OS. I've had to update the OS on my iPod Touch once to run an app, and the update completely hosed the thing. I was able to boot back to default settings and resync, but all access point settings and user preferences and such had to be reconfigured. Wasn't fun. I'm on 3.1.1 now (3.2 is out but I'm timid about the upgrade), but if I see anything that requires anything newer than that I'm just holding off.
In regards to the GP's "open doesn't pay the bills" statement though, I'm counting on the opposite. Whether it's going to be fun or easy to code for remains to be seen, but it's already obvious that the demand is there for Android phones, which will pretty much mean that there's going to be demand for Android apps. Which do you think is going to be a more lucrative market? The already over-saturated platform that's so easy to code for that a monkey can do it, or the slightly harder platform with fewer apps?
I wrote a few iPhone apps just to play around with the coding. Never published anything to the app store though. Android however, is a different story. I've got 4-5 apps already planned out.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain